SOUL is an interdisciplinary group of four artists (Dudley Saunders, Paul Outlaw, Sharon Udoh and Sara Lyons), whose individual practices in music, theater and performance meet at the intersection of archival excavation, social justice and formal experimentation. As a collective, we share a mission to deconstruct and rebuild power in performance through examinations and re-embodiments of legacies of Euro-American history. We leverage our diverse backgrounds—ranging from West Berlin’s independent art scene to the improvisational traditions of the Black Pentecostal church to the deep folk of Appalachia—to create critically embodied works that center the hidden lives of marginalized people.
Our genre-bending workspace is marked by rigor in the individual contributions: Paul and Dudley provide the foundational research into historical violence and marginalized narratives; Sharon contributes a deep, improvisational relationship to American hymnody and blues; and Sara provides the directorial framework to translate these ingredients into avant-garde theater. Together, we are dedicated to using performance as a tool for public understanding, collective healing and queer liberation.
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Dudley Saunders is a writer, composer and performance artist who has created five stage works, including Death Blues (Best Musical, New York Press) and Birdbones. A three-time Emmy nominee and winner for the documentary City Rising, his recordings have earned GLAMA, OutMusic, and Mountain Stage awards. Dudley has written for Rolling Stone and The Village Voice, and has received fellowships from Yaddo and the Albee Foundation, alongside grants from the Joyce Mertz-Gilmore Foundation. His prominent artistic collaborations include projects with John Kelly and Sarah Schulman at Performance Space New York, and Heather Woodbury. Learn more at dudleysaunders.com.
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Paul Outlaw is a Los Angeles and Berlin-based multidisciplinary artist whose work examines the physical and psychological legacies of white supremacist, patriarchal violence in Euro-American history. Leaving the fractured society of Reagan-era America, Paul spent a decade in Cold War Berlin, where he fronted post-punk bands like Die Haut and starred in the Oscar-winning short Schwarzfahrer (1993). He has created solo and collaborative performances since the 1990s, including BBC (Big Black Cockroach), which premiered at REDCAT in 2024. His work has been presented at LACMA, MOCA, and Berlin’s Maxim Gorki Theater, earning grants from the Foundation for Contemporary Art and others. Learn more at outlawplay.com.
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Sharon Udoh is a Nigerian-American pianist, composer and 2026 United States Artist Fellow. Initially trained in the Pentecostal church, she later held a residency at Columbus's Wexner Center for the Arts. There, she joined Lars Jan’s production of The White Album, which led to her collaborating and performing with the experimental rap group clipping. since 2019. Moving to Chicago in 2022, Sharon immersed herself in its experimental music scene. Her current projects include The Black Soaps (an episodic opera with Marvin Tate), the sextet Potluck, the improvised duo Potliquor with Allen Moore, and her solo American-African Hymnal project exploring U.S. hymn literature. Learn more at sharonudoh.com.
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Sara Lyons is a bicoastal director creating interdisciplinary theatre that explodes form and politics. Working across adaptation, social practice and new media, their work has been presented by REDCAT, The Kitchen and the Edinburgh Fringe. Sara has received residencies at CAP UCLA and the Santa Fe Art Institute. Current projects include This Emancipation Thing at REDCAT and BBC (Big Black Cockroach) with Paul Outlaw. An alum of NYU's EMERGENYC and holder of an MFA from Carnegie Mellon, Sara has taught at UCLA and Sarah Lawrence, and currently teaches directing at Skidmore College. Learn more at sara-lyons.com.
Photo courtesy of the artists
The failure on our part to accept the reality of pain, of anguish, of ambiguity, of death has turned us into a very peculiar and sometimes monstrous people.
James Baldwin, “The Uses of the Blues” (1964)
Sometimes the fragments make more sense than the line. Our first collaboration, Blue, is a genre-bending new work of devised performance re-embodying queer legacies of blues music through music, storytelling and improvisation.
Through intersecting music and storytelling, we will look to buried blues heroes of the past—including queer and queer-presumed pioneers like Elvie “L.V.” Thomas (1891-1979) and Geechie Wiley (1908-1950), Tony Jackson (1882-1921), Bessie Smith (1892-1937), and Billy Wright (1932-1991)—as we fashion a new blues for the 21st century in real time.
Where is our anguish, where are our desires and pleasures that threaten and repulse, where is the joy that somehow grows in inverse proportion to frustration and fear? By inhabiting and breaking the form of the blues, this work will locate collective feeling in twelve bars and beyond. It’s a song of survival. A song for those whose stories can’t be finished.
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Bessie Smith, 1936. Photo by Carl Van Vechten.
Lovie Austin, c. 1925.
Tony Jackson, c. 1911.
Mike Nagoda, 2016. Photo by Jon Nye.
Billy Wright, 1950s.
Janis Joplin, 1969. Photo by Malcolm McNeill.
Alberta Hunter, c. 1940. Photo by James J. Kriegsmann.
Lucille Bogan, c. 1933.
Billie Holiday, 1954. Mirrorpix/Daily Mirror.
Ethel Waters, c. 1935.
Elvie “L.V.” Thomas, c. 1975. Photo by Robin Wartell.
Frankie “Half-Pint” Jaxon, c. 1933.
Charles Brown, c. 1950.
Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton and The Muddy Waters Blues Band, 1966. Photo by Jim Marshall.
Gertrude “Ma” Rainey and her band, 1923..
Gladys Bentley, c. 1930s.
Every effort has been made to trace the copyright holders of the historical photographs on this page. If you hold the rights to any image displayed here and it is incorrectly credited, please contact us for immediate correction or removal.
Currently in development, Blue takes the form of a blues concert and will combine the direct testimony of the artists’ lives (in the form of concert “patter”) and the fictional narratives that bloom from them in the form of experimental, cross-genre songs. Songs that begin with deep blues twist out of the blues tradition to take on new forms that reflect what the queer ghosts of the hidden blues past have become in a new queer millennium. Unnameable identities that found form in the blues become, in this piece, what no one could have imagined.
BLUE @ CIRCA
One Institute is proud to present the first work-in-process version of Blue at Circa, the first and only LGBTQ+ histories festival in the United States, held each October during LGBTQ+ History Month.
Established in 2023, Circa: Queer Histories Festival is a month-long, Los Angeles County-wide programming series showcasing the trailblazing histories and vibrant cultural contributions of LGBTQ+ communities through the lens of present-day challenges and triumphs. Through exhibitions, performance, readings, screenings, lectures, dialogues and parties, Circa features queer and trans artists, activists and educators leading the movement for LGBTQ+ liberation.
Watch this space for details about location, times and tickets!
“Summer Sweets”
a BLUE Benefit Bash
On Saturday, July 25th, join us for a casual summer afternoon/evening filled with delicious desserts, great company and a wonderful cause! We are gathering to satisfy our sweet tooth while raising funds for Blue’s debut at the Circa Queer Histories Festival. Come for the pastries, stay for a preview of our dive into LGBTQ+ legacies of the blues!
We are accepting voluntary donations to support us in reaching our goal of $3,000 to help cover initial production expenses from our creation workshop in July. You can donate via this link, or bring cash/Venmo on the day of the event!
Click here to join the guest list! (Note: Partiful will send a quick text verification code to secure your RSVP.)